ushwap widow _must not_ allow her shadow to fall on any one, and
must bed her head on thorns. Bancroft notes (I., 731) that among the
Mosquito Indians

"the widow was _bound_ to supply the grave of her husband
with provisions for a year, after which she took up the
bones and carried them with her for another year, at last
placing them upon the roof of her house, and then only was
she _allowed_ to marry again."

The widows of the Tolkotin Indians in Oregon were subjected to such
maltreatment that some of them committed suicide to escape their
sufferings. For nine days they were obliged to sleep beside the corpse
and follow certain rules in regard to dressing and eating. If a widow
neglected any of these, she was on the tenth day thrown on the funeral
pile with the corpse and tossed about and scorched till she lost
consciousness. Afterward she was obliged to perform the function of a
slave to all the other women and children of the tribe.[124]

So far as I am aware, no previous writer on the subject has emphasized
the obligatory character of all these performances by widows. To me
that seems by far the most important aspect of the question, as it
shows that the widows were not prompted to these actions by
affectionate grief or self-sacrificing impulses, but by the command of
the men; and if we bear in mind the superlative selfishness of these
men we have no difficulty in comprehending that what makes them compel
the women to do these penances is the desire to make them eager to
care for the comfort and welfare of their husbands lest the latter die
and they thus bring upon themselves the discomforts arid terrors of
widowhood.

Martius justly remarks that the great dependance of savage women makes
them eager to please their husbands (121); and this eagerness would
naturally be doubled by making widowhood forbidding. Bruhier wrote, in
1743, that in Corsica it was customary, in case a man died, for the
women to fall upon his widow and give her a sound drubbing. This
custom, he adds significantly, "prompted the women to take good care
of their husbands."

It is true that the widowers also in some cases subjected themselves
to penance; but usually they made it very much easier for themselves
than for the widows. In his _Lettres sur le Congo_ (152) Edouard
Dupont relates that a man who has lost his wife and wants to show
grief shaves his head, blackens himself, _stops work_, and sits in
front of h